


Patent

by SilverPocketWatch



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Gen, Shady Hur Hur Business Deals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:41:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverPocketWatch/pseuds/SilverPocketWatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shady Shin decides to steal Asami's car. Asami decides to steal something back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patent

**Patent. noun/adjective ******(1) : secured by letters patent or by a patent to the exclusive control and possession of a particular individual or party: protected by a trademark or a brand name so as to establish proprietary rights. (2) : readily visible or intelligible : obvious.

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.

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“When was the last time you ate?"

Shin squeezed his eyes shut against the flashlight beam.

“Any medical conditions?" The flashlight clicked off and a security guard came into focus. "Chronic illness?"

 _My foot in your ass is thinking of becoming chronic._ Shin swatted the guard's hand away wished there was something in his stomach so he could throw up all over him. It was bad enough to pass out in Future Industries HQ's parking deck, let alone to get caught.

There were two security guards with him on the lowest level of the deck—one checking his wallet, the other checking his pulse. Shin sat against a warm cement wall, trying to ignore the furnace clicking on and off inside his head. He must have looked as bad as he felt, because the first guard bent water into a rag from a hip flask and pressed it to the back of his neck. The relief didn’t last.

“Sheeeeet." Shady Shin did not have to turn around to hear the whistle of the second guard or recognize the fliff of a thick wad of cash. "That's a lot of purple to be carrying around in a cheap wallet, son."

"Charity's expensive," said Shin.

"Mind telling why a saint like you needs to lurk around here on a weekend, then?" The second guard was a thick woman in grey uniform whose sweat threatened to overpower the diesel stink of the sweltering parking deck. "Mr.-" She plucked an ID from his wallet. " _Jiro_. I'm sure a few phone calls can tell us whether or not that's your real name."

"First of all, _twist_...." Shady Shin massaged his eyes. "You're security, not fuzz. So either drop the act and call the tin can brigade or let me go. I didn't do anything."

"Uh hmmm" She poked the back of his head with what he knew, with a swoop in his gut, was a greased wire. "This was beside you on the pavement."

"Some criminal mastermind must be out there straightening coat hangers," he said.

"That the story you want to go with?"

"Yeah. Now be a good pigchicken and go find them." 

"Still doesn't explain why we found you face down in our boss' private parking space.” She leaned down over his shoulder like a bad conscience. The first guard, back to timing Shin's pulse with his watch, raised an eyebrow.

Shin had wondered the same thing. The last thing he remembered was sliding a wire under the window of the Satomobile parked in the 'Executives Only' spot ( _nubuck fascia, leather interior, piano black chassis _), when his bones turned to helium and the pavement smacked up vertical. The next thing he knew a security guard was dragging him by the ankles from under the sleek black roadster, shouting for help.__

All day there had been a strange buzzing in his right ear, but before he snuck into the oven heat of the parking deck he'd felt fine.

"You can't prove anything." He scratched his tongue against his teeth and spat to the side. "No evidence."

"You know, your mouth keeps saying one thing-" The guard caught his arm and tugged the silk sleeve of his shirt to the elbow. "But your ink tells me I have all the evidence-" 

Heels echoed down the parking deck stairwell. Both guards jumped to their feet. Shin started to turn, but the motion streaked nausea up his throat and forced his head down. Murmurs. A girl's voice. The word “thug” tossed around. Shin pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes. A few minutes conference later the heels clicked down the stairs until they were beside him. A pocketbook clicked open (he knew the sound of money anywhere) and a sheet of long hair brushed past his face with a whiff of jasmine perfume like the asscrack of spring.

"Here," whispered a soft voice.

Something pressed into his palm. Shin squinted open an eye enough to recognize a candy bar....and the dangling silver earring that brushed past his cheek.

_Oh shit._

"He was trying to pop your window," said the guardwoman behind him, as if he wasn't there. "With this."

"Planted that on me," said Shin doggedly, screwing his eyes up harder. _And I wasn't trying._ A few more seconds and he would have had that beauty hotwired. A few minutes, and he'd have been adjusting the mirrors as he tore across Dragon Flats.

They awaited High Heel's response. 

"Did you give him water?" she asked.

"No, I....." The guard that had given Shin the compress sounded embarrassed. "Protocol says to check his vitals first." 

"Let's get him up to my office." said the girl. "There's a fan up there."

"Miss-"

"I want to speak with him."

Shin couldn't have split if he tried. It took both guards to haul him to his feet and half-drag, half-shove him up the stairwell. From the elevator at the top they steered him across a silent lobby, up another elevator and down a carpeted hallway. At the far far end was a thick rosewood door carved with intricate lacquered cogs.

“You can go back downstairs.” The girl said to the guards, and after a pause, "I can take care of myself."

 _Of course she can._ The office key turning in its lock was loud as an ice crusher. Shin winced and slid the wet compress off his neck and molded it over his eyes, trying not to retch all over his shoes.

Around the compress, he noted that the office was larger than his apartment. It was sparse, conspicuously so, with dust outlines on the walls where portraits had hung. The guards sat him down in a studded leather armchair, then reluctantly, pulled the thick red iron door shut behind them.

A fan clicked on. Shin counted the ticking pulse in his neck while a water cooler gurgled. Footprints crossed the carpet and tapped his shoulder with a glass of cold water. He took it queasily. The stink of jasmine perfume washed over him again like a wet diaper to the face, making him shiver.

"Do you have low blood glucose?" she asked.

"Glu-what?" 

Shin lifted the rag off his eyes. Miss Asami Sato sat behind an acreage of desk, gripping the arms of a chair three times too big for her. She looked like a little girl playing in her father's study. 

"Must have been the heat, huh.” 

She laid the greased wire on the desk. 

"You were trying to break into my car," she said. "Why?"

"Hypothetically?" said Shin. 

"Sure, why not." Shin noted the strain in her voice, and the eye roll. No surprise. He read the papers enough to know Future Industries was sinking faster than an Empire Class Fire Nation Battleship. She had probably been ready to swerve out of this place after a long day of losing shareholders before tripping over him. "Hypothetically, why my car?" 

"Maybe I wanted to hear its purr," said Shin honestly, nudging the rag to his forehead. He'd also liked the idea of Republic City's It Girl- daughter of an Equalist and gal pal to the Avatar- dropping her jaw and designer bag at the sight of an empty parking spot. "Maybe I was trying to blow it up." 

"You'd have to be stupid to try."

"That was a joke, princess."

Asami Sato narrowed her eyes. It was surprisingly menacing. She would have made someone a good mob wife. If not a good mob boss.

"Did you know it was mine?" she asked.

_Half the thrill was knowing who it belonged to. _"Not a clue."__

“But you were going to steal _my_ car.”

“Funny thing. The showman at the dealership wouldn’t let me behind the wheel, so when I passed your office and noticed someone had left the exact same model I wanted in plain view of the street in an empty parking deck I thought, why not?” _Why not give you a reason to walk home, and me a chance to drive down Main Street past all the flops with one hand on the wheel?_ The chrome rims alone would have kept his creditors at bay for at least a year. "As a potential customer.”

“A customer.” She said that word as if she wanted to swat it. “So as a customer, you targeted me personally?"

"Dollface, do you see my threads?" The Fire Nation laundry down the street from his flat had not been kind to his clothes these last few months. He was so used to waterbending his delicate silk shirts that the reality of taking care of them by hand had made him a bum. Nevermind that the pawn shops now owned all his chains, he couldn’t even bribe the old lady in the flat next door to get the soup stains off his collar. “Do I look like I'm on that kind of payroll?"

"Your tattoos are Triple Threats."

Shin resisted the urge to roll down his sleeves. "There are no more Triple Threats."

"There are still gangsters. I've seen you before." 

"Must have been a pimp.” Shin flashed her a switchblade grin. "What sort of street corners you been hanging out on, Miss Sato?" 

"City Hall last month. You were petitioning to get your bending back."

That threw him. It made sense for the city's youngest millionaire and heiress to haunt city hall, what with the trials that had been going on... "And yet you couldn't help notice little old me?"

"Mako did."

Silence. Shin lifted the rag off his face. He swung it over the carpet, let it drip, and dropped it with a wet slap. Water curled around his nose.

Of course. Of course Mako would notice him. Saintly, stainless Mako. The baby bird who flew the coop and left Shin to clean up the nest. He could just see the kid sighing and shaking his head, sadly telling Asami Sato and the Avatar that his deadend piece of trash babysitter Shady Shin got exactly what he deserved.

“He said I should keep my eye out for his old friends.”

"That why you brought me up here? As a favor to a _friend?_ " Shin swirled the glass like a tumbler. What he wouldn't give for a real drink. "I guess you know everything there is to know about me."

"I know what happened at the rally." She twisted the wire, making her leather gloves squeak. Shin had a brief, startled vision of those gloves twisting his silk shirt before dragging him down, then shoved it away. He was sick enough already. "I know what almost happened to Bolin was your fault."

"Then what else is there to say? Slap it on my tombstone. That can be your new business." Shin pressed the sweating glass against his brow. "Future Industries Funeraries."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said, too quickly.

"Only that everything worth knowing about you is in the bankruptcy section of the newspaper. Guess that makes us each others' biographers, right?" 

Her expression couldn't have been better if he slapped her. For a moment, he thought she might dive across the table and slap _him_ , but her face softened. She looked vaguely ashamed.

"I didn't bring you up here to start a fight."

"Could've fooled me.

"I want to make a deal.

Now _that_ was a real surprise. Last time Shin checked, you didn't go shaking hands with pushers who tried to lift your car. Either Asami Sato was trying to con him, or she was more desperate than-

"I know how hard it’s been for people who lost their bending."

 _Ah_. Charity was expensive after all.

"You know." What was he doing. He needed to take this rope, take the out, get out of here. "And you feel guilty, sitting there in your designer suit with your daddy's money? If this is about you halfway houses-"

"It's not." She pinched the bridge of her nose and for a moment seemed ten years older. Shin wondered how many hours Asami Sato sat alone in her office, alone in her mansion. "Trust me, I've had my fill talking about Equalists and-"

"Amon." 

Silence again. Shin tightened his grip around the glass of water. Water separated by more than glass. Water that, if he was honest with himself, all these months later still felt a dead thing sliding down his throat. 

Asami Sato hadn't been at the rally, but thousands of people had. They had seen him run. Scream like a girl. Amon’s fingers like pliers on his neck, thumb descending, a sharp, scalpel pain like something being gouged out of his brain--then nothing. The release of his bladder. A sudden inexplicable shame. The way he and Zolt had huddled in the corner of the stage like neutered dogs in stunning, throbbing pain. Almost six months later, Shin was still in disbelief at how much it hurt. Like an icepick stabbing straight to the pith of his skull, over and over and over.

Maybe that was why he passed out today. Why he was always so dehydrated. Why most days he felt like a fish gasping on raw pavement. That part of him that should be able to feel, could still feel sometimes— _the push and pull of muscles, the heft and flow of steaming it, coaxing it, the clench and exhale of freezing it, the sharp inhale that exploded it into steam_ —was gone. No matter how much he splashed his face, walked through the rain, studied the filth swirling in the gutters, it was if a cage had been set down between him and the world. That first time he had tried to lift it from the gutter and couldn’t….

Water beaded on the glass. Once, he would have given anything to have his bending back. Anything but seeing the smug look on Mako's face when he came begging to the Avatar for his life back. Turned out a red DENIED stamp on a piece of paper was all it took for him to send him off with his tail between his legs.

"You don't know _shit_ ," someone said, too bitter to be him. He took a sip of water and let it slime down his throat. "Wanna tell me about how the Avatar did me a favor by leaving me crippled?"

“That’s not Korra’s fault,” she whispered.

"Somebody's fault." This was tiresome. "You gonna tell me what you want, or you gonna pick up that phone?"

“Look. I don’t know anything about you. Other than you’re a terrible liar...” She came around the desk and folded her arms. “But I don't want to stay here for another three hours answering police questions. And I doubt you do either."

After today? Shin would probably lock himself in his flat until he had to go push merchandise down at the wharfs, but sure, this sterile office was definitely not where he wanted to be.

"Here's the deal," she said flatly. "You tell me everything you know about stealing Satomobiles, and we forget this ever happened." 

"Don't you have engineers to figure that shit out?" 

"None of them are criminals."

Shin shifted uncomfortably. The afternoon sun poured white through the curtainless windows behind her desk, super-heating the office. The leather chair was sticking to ass, making his pants bunch in swampy knots around his groin. He didn't like where this was going.

"What, right here and now?"

"Tomorrow. At my scrap lot. I'll arrange a car to pick you up." Asami Sato extended a gloved hand. 

"This really necessary?" 

She arched a penstroke eyebrow. 

"Right." Shin finished the water and tried not the puke. "I tell you my secrets, and then what?" 

"Then I never see you on Future Industry property again," she said, nothing remotely kind in her eyes. "Deal?" 

Bad deals were something Shady Shin knew how to make.


End file.
